Fight them on the breaches

Naturally, we are all worried about the potential for cyberattack by agents of foreign powers bent on destroying our way of life. Or Skynet, whichever comes first.

Kroes called on Europe’s 27 member states to develop the region’s first contingency plan for cyber attacks and form emergency response teams by end-2012. Regional and local attack exercises should become a matter of routine, and individual countries should help develop agreed global security principals for the Web and cloud computing.

When I read this, I the word “local” tripped me up, because I’m not sure what it means in this context, but then I thought of a kind of 21-st century home guard standing by to repel them on the e-beaches and wondered if this makes more sense given Europe’s demographics. Neelie Kroes specifically mentions Belgium in the article. In Belgium only half of the adult population work: the rest are unemployed or have retired on generous pensions, so the idea of a group of retired bank managers, policemen, local government officials and unemployed persons coming together to form the new Dad’s Cyber-Army (“who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Assange… tra la la”) made me start laughing. I’ve already got some ideas for the first few episodes, and have a classic punchline ready for action: “What’s your password?” / “Don’t tell him it’s ‘Pike'”.